Modelling, Simulation and Control of Lab-Scale Process Control Trainer

Abstract

Process control is an engineering discipline that deals with architectures, mechanisms and algorithms to maintain various process variables at the desired value or along desired trajectory despite the presence of process uncertainties and disturbances. It is the subject area of continuous and growing interests due to its importance in accomplishing efficient and optimal (energy and production) operations across wide-spectrum of industry like oil and gas, refinery, power plant, chemical, pharmaceutical industries, cement, paper, pharmaceutical, food processing etc. The most common process variables of interest across industry are level, pressure, temperature and flow.

In this thesis, it is proposed to systematically work towards modeling, simulation, control of process variables like level, pressure Control. The work will cover mathematical modeling and simulation for a single tank level system and model validation using the specific level process control trainer in our lab. Next, PID control for the same process will be developed using advanced process control instrumentation like industrial PLC (e.g. Allen-Bradley, Mitsubishi, Siemens) and NI-LabVIEW based SCADA platform. It is proposed to interface PLC and NI-LabVIEW using MODBUS RTU protocol. Then, the systematic investigations will be carried out to study effects of various PID control modes and parameters on the process behaviour. Next, the work will be extended further to incorporate, test and demonstrate various PID auto-tuning techniques. Subsequently, this work can be extended further to incorporate similar studies for other process control trainers like pressure etc.